Microsoft says B(lack)SODs not linked to latest patches

Microsoft is denying that the latest Patch Tuesday has resulted in some PCs …

Microsoft is denying reports of the Black Screen of Death on a number of PCs. A fraction of Windows users have been complaining their computers were locking up and displaying a Black Screen of Death (BSOD, not to be confused with Blue Screen of Death, which is usually due to hardware or driver failure) after the last Microsoft Patch Tuesday on November 10, 2009.

"Microsoft has investigated reports that its November security updates made changes to permissions in the registry that that are resulting in system issues for some customers," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. "The company has found those reports to be inaccurate and our comprehensive investigation has shown that none of the recently released updates are related to the behavior described in the reports."

"While we were not contacted by the organization who originally made these reports, we have proactively contacted them with our findings. Our support organization is also not seeing this as an issue. The claims also do not match any known issues that have been documented in the security bulletins or KB articles."

Security company Prevx first claimed the latest patches were making changes to the Access Control List (ACL), a list of permissions for a logged-on user, in the registry. The result was some installed applications (especially security products) failing to run properly, causing a BSOD on Windows -2000, NT, XP, Vista, and 7, according to Prevx. The security company released their own fix that reportedly makes the appropriate changes in the registry (this can also be done manually) to match the ACL settings.

Today though, Prevx has changed its stance on the issue: "Having narrowed down a specific trigger for this condition we've done quite a bit of testing and re-testing on the recent Windows patches including KB976098 and KB915597 as referred to in our previous blog. Since more specifically narrowing down the cause we have been able to exonerate these patches from being a contributory factor."

"We apologize to Microsoft for any inconvenience our blog may have caused. This has been a challenging issue to identify. Users who have the black screen issue referred to can still safely use our free fix tool to restore their desktop icons and taskbar."

When we contacted Microsoft yesterday, the software giant wasn't yet ready to comment on the reported issue. Instead, the company said it was investigating, and apparently that stage is now complete; Microsoft has concluded its patches are not to blame. We have not encountered computers that have had this problem, so we're not sure of the scope of affected users, but since the problem still remains, we'll follow this story closely as it unfolds.

15 Reader Comments

Really? Is that a quote? Or did you make it up? You really should read what the spokesperson is quoted as saying before you infer something wildly else, because otherwise it sounds like you're lying.

Edit:

quote:

Microsoft clearly wanted to improve the security of Windows, but for some users, the solution ended up breaking their installations

Oh, and this is just wild speculation on your part, and it's taking Prevx's claims as your own. Which is odd, because you present no clue as to the substantive differences between the parties' claims and why we should believe one over the other as you do.

Hmm - have never seen this - manage over 500 machines all running vista, and we patch weekly... My bet it is a wonky piece of anti-malware/virus/spyware software that didnt play well with an update. But you can not blame MS for that, many software companies follow APIs way to loose, and they get burned when things hit the fan... And then they blam MS - hey why not

You know what is odd about this story is that I got a B(lack)SOD over the weekend but installed no updates(unless MSE updated, i have it on auto). Was the first time I had the issue, was quite random and seemed to cause some issues even after a few restarts. Then after taking the power off of my pc while inspecting all my hardware, when i restarted it was cake again. Idk I found it very strange.

I had a similar issue this weekend, but I don't know whether it's exactly the same as what Prevx is describing.

It started after I tried resuming my computer from sleep; it would just display the desktop background with nothing else. After waiting for a while and making sure the hard drive indicator wasn't showing any activity, I manually shut down the laptop.

After turning it back on, it loaded all the way to "Starting Windows..."; after that, it would display a black screen and go no further. It wouldn't show the login screen or anything. Manually turned it on and off, same thing.

Thinking I'd done something to my hard drive with the manual shutdowns, I restarted it with a live CD and did a chkdsk; found no problems. I then did a repair using the Windows 7 install disk. Unfortunately I didn't write down the exact message, but it said something along the lines "System cannot be repaired, a previous patch is preventing Windows from starting" (very loosely paraphrased). "Funny, never seen that message before", I thought before using a live CD to copy my files to an external drive and reinstalling Windows. I thought no more of it until I saw the news about the B(lack) SODs.

Again, I'm not sure it's the same problem that Prevx describes, as I didn't get the black screen after logging on; my computer didn't get that far. However, it's interesting that the repair error message did mention a patch.

EDIT: I also tried booting into Safe Mode, but couldn't. It would load all the drivers, then hang with a blank screen.

Really? Is that a quote? Or did you make it up? You really should read what the spokesperson is quoted as saying before you infer something wildly else, because otherwise it sounds like you're lying.

Edit:

quote:

Microsoft clearly wanted to improve the security of Windows, but for some users, the solution ended up breaking their installations

Oh, and this is just wild speculation on your part, and it's taking Prevx's claims as your own. Which is odd, because you present no clue as to the substantive differences between the parties' claims and why we should believe one over the other as you do.

I got the black SOD twice and each time solved it by moving my USB hub connector to a different usb outlet on the back of my case. Since it's happened twice, the hub is now connected back to its original outlet. The BSOD started with my USB mouse locking up, then the video card losing feed a bit later.

I have an unusable laptop due to this Black Screen Of Death. Safe mode does not work (although I have yet to try safe mode with command prompt), repair does not work, restore to a previous Restore point does not work either... It all happened when I applied the recent updates to a NEW CLEAN INSTALL of Vista.

I am reinstalling the OS again (3rd time...) and see if I can use some workarounds described on the net (sticky keys and safe mode with command prompt)...

In any case, it is _clearly_ a case of an MS update broke it. (I had not done or installed anything else)

Originally posted by Nick2000:In any case, it is _clearly_ a case of an MS update broke it. (I had not done or installed anything else)

The update changed something, maybe, but it might be something else that broke everything. For example, the update might have changed the timing of a few kernel calls into a third-party driver, and exposed a race condition in that driver. Just because it's clear to you means nothing unless you actually know what's going on.

Originally posted by Nick2000:I have an unusable laptop due to this Black Screen Of Death. Safe mode does not work (although I have yet to try safe mode with command prompt), repair does not work, restore to a previous Restore point does not work either... It all happened when I applied the recent updates to a NEW CLEAN INSTALL of Vista.

I am reinstalling the OS again (3rd time...) and see if I can use some workarounds described on the net (sticky keys and safe mode with command prompt)...

In any case, it is _clearly_ a case of an MS update broke it. (I had not done or installed anything else)